


The Altar is Calling

by gubby



Series: Unholy Union [1]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Arranged Marriage, Demon AU, Demons, F/M, Reader-Insert, Summoning, demon!arthur, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21960553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gubby/pseuds/gubby
Summary: You accidentally summon a demon while practicing your wedding vows
Relationships: Arthur Morgan/Reader
Series: Unholy Union [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1757644
Comments: 5
Kudos: 131





	The Altar is Calling

The forest has always been a place of serenity, finding sacredness in its lack of change. There’s a spiritual connection to be found when stepping on stones carved long before even your grandparents were born, since eroded and reclaimed by nature. Their markings are faded in clarity and in the memories of generations, once meaningful but now unintelligible. 

You find yourself upon this hallowed ground not in search of spiritual clarity, or reflection, but memory. The truth isn’t simply that you’re a spoiled noble girl with nothing better to do than rehearse vows for an arranged marriage, though you look upon it with a sense of complacent dread. The truth is that you’re not allowed to do much of anything else.

“With this hand I will… I will…” Your forgetfulness beckoned you into your own wandering thoughts. Was this family crest little but a burden cast upon you at birth? To be free of the troubles of survival, and robbed of choice in recompense? You tried to continue despite not finishing the first line.

“Love and something something, I promise to be your… wife? No, that sounds stupid. Even for a wedding.” To be completely honest, you paid much more attention to the pleasant sound of your heels clacking against stones than to your recitation. And who wouldn’t? Everyone loves a good heel clack.

“Give me peace and retrospection. Maybe?” The woods echoed with the sounds of your indifference and melancholy. No birds, no rustling leaves. 

“And you will be my knight. That part, I know!” you cheered inwardly without much thought, and plopped down onto an area of mossy cobble, with an exasperated sigh escaping you. Did you truly have no talents? Charm, agency, not even memory? That couldn’t be. You were sure you could remember if you really tried. Rehearsal be damned, you had something to prove to yourself.

“With this hand, I will guide you through the darkness

With love and generosity, I promise to be your light

Give me peace and protection

And you will be my knight”

To say you were pleased with yourself was the understatement of the year. But if you were to refuse yourself such simple pleasures as that, you’d scarcely find any enjoyment in life. You were pulled from your contentment by a hand reaching around your waist. A big hand. The warmed, biggest hand you’d ever felt. Not that you were some sort of serial hand-toucher or anything.

Curiosity overpowered what little sense of self-preservation you had. With guidance from the aforementioned hand and the arm attached to it, presumably the rest of the body as well, you spun around to find yourself in the arms of someone you’d never seen before. Someone or something not of this world.

Normally you would not so hastily draw such conclusions, or course. You weren’t judgemental or anything. But the signs were there, in the form of one strikingly handsome man, tall and well built, sporting a pair of curled black horns, a matching black tail, and cloven feet. And yes, his legs were like, kinda hairy, but people sometimes said the same about you. Everything about him expressed his being able to snap you like a twig, but the way he held you somehow told you better. It was a snug and tender hold, not uncomfortable, but precisely the way someone very insecure and simultaneously excited holds something. You were broken away from your thoughts yet again, and like, talk about rude, by a voice. His voice. Low down, drawling, a touch of gruffness, but gentle beneath it all.

“Couldn’ta said it better myself, sweetheart.” The adoration behind his words and his eyes, which you’d now met, was overwhelming. The kiss he planted on your lips was just the same. Suffice to say, you were too dumbstruck with confusion to retaliate. You didn’t know where to start with all this.

“Who are you?” panic, though not evident in your voice, was starting to creep into your chest from your diaphragm like a worm through an apple. If worms actually did that, you’ve never actually seen it, but you’d always wanted to. He had the nerve to laugh in a non committal way.

“Yer husband, as of about two minutes ago.” And also a huge clown, he forgot to say.

“Rather, um, why?” He sighed a little, a mix of both dreamy and relenting, as he saw you clearly didn’t know a damned thing about what happened and you weren’t just gonna make it easy for him by rolling with the punches. But love ain’t supposed to be easy, he remembers.

“Y’said those vows on my altar, darlin’. Though ya might not have guessed it, from the state of things ‘round here.” He gestured to the floor of carved stones, runes just barely aglow with his presence. “Contract’s a contract. And you wouldn’t believe how long I been waitin’ to hear words like those, sweet pea. Never woulda believed they’d come from someone as cute as you. Never thought they’d sound quite that lovely, either.” His expression grows softer, and quite honestly, way harder to refuse as he speaks. With the thought of your former betrothed, whose face you can barely recall now, you can’t say you’re not warming up to the idea of being married to like, a goat-man-spirit or whatever. Just a little.

“You just married yourself a demon, pretty lady. But I promise you won’t regret it. I’ll make ya happy, protect you ‘n all the other stuff good husbands are ‘spposed to do. Arthur Morgan, at your service.” The last part sounds like an afterthought, but you can’t fight your polite upbringing and introduce yourself in turn while he smiles like an idiot, unbeknownst to him.

“That’s a fine name. Real pretty.”

* * *

Before you know it, for hours you’ve been sat on the stony ground chatting up your ‘husband’. Every so often he tried to inch a little closer to you, and half the time you indulge him, the other half you scoot away and tease him. And Arthur is surprised. You’ve got way more questions about matrimony than you do the whole demon thing. No askin’ about living in hell, or bearing the antichrist. Your most recent question was about if you had to take his last name.

“I don’t expect you to or nothin’, it ain’t exactly interesting, Morgan. Hell, I think I forget it sometimes. Demons don’t tend to care about that sorta thing anyhow.”

His more sadistic, “stereotypical demon” personality starts shining through when he talks about how a lot of demons brand their partners instead. You can see him delight in the apprehension and worry on your face.

“Don’t worry babygirl, I ain’t gonna subject you to anythin’ like that. Not yet, anyways.” Careful, Arthur. Your unmarriageable clown is showing.

A call through the forest interrupts your arguably pleasant chit-chat. Your name. It’s one of the servants. Dusk is fast approaching the horizon, and the scheduled time for your wedding rehearsal must be near.

“Got somewhere to be, little lady?”

“You could say that. There’s something you should know about me, Arthur. I’m betrothed.”

The momentary delight at hearing his own name from your lips is cut short with a simmering jealous annoyance. He quiets it down. You’re not ready to see him like that yet, but someday he’ll be able to bear his soul to you, he can feel it.

“Well. Nobody’s perfect.”


End file.
